Tales of Three Hemispheres eBook

HOW THE GODS AVENGED MEOUL KI NING

Meoul Ki Ning was on his way with a lily from the
lotus ponds of Esh to offer it to the Goddess of Abundance
in her temple Aoul Keroon. And on the road from
the pond to the little hill and the temple Aoul Keroon,
Ap Ariph, his enemy, shot him with an arrow from a
bow that he had made out of bamboo, and took his pretty
lily up the hill and offered it to the Goddess of
Abundance in her temple Aoul Keroon. And the
Goddess was pleased with the gift, as all women are,
and sent pleasant dreams to Ap Ariph for seven nights
straight from the moon.

And on the seventh night the gods held conclave together,
on the cloudy peaks they held it, above Narn, Ktoon,
and Pti. So high their peak arises that no man
heard their voices. They spake on that cloudy
mountain (not the highest hamlet heard them).
“What doth the Goddess of Abundance,”
(but naming her Lling, as they name her), “what
doth she sending sweet dreams for seven nights to
Ap Ariph?”

And the gods sent for their seer who is all eyes and
feet, running to and fro on the Earth, observing the
ways of men, seeing even their littlest doings, never
deeming a doing too little, but knowing the web of
the gods is woven of littlest things. He it is
that sees the cat in the garden of parakeets, the
thief in the upper chamber, the sin of the child with
the honey, the women talking indoors and the small
hut’s innermost things. Standing before
the gods he told them the case of Ap Ariph and the
wrongs of Meoul Ki Ning and the rape of the lotus
lily; he told of the cutting and making of Ap Ariph’s
bamboo bow, of the shooting of Meoul Ki Ning, and
of how the arrow hit him, and the smile on the face
of Lling when she came by the lotus bloom.

And the gods were wroth with Ap Ariph and swore to
avenge Ki Ning.

And the ancient one of the gods, he that is older
than Earth, called up the thunder at once, and raised
his arms and cried out on the gods’ high windy
mountain, and prophesied on those rocks with runes
that were older than speech, and sang in his wrath
old songs that he had learned in storm from the sea,
when only that peak of the gods in the whole of the
earth was dry; and he swore that Ap Ariph should die
that night, and the thunder raged about him, and the
tears of Lling were vain.

The lightning stroke of the gods leaping earthward
seeking Ap Ariph passed near to his house but missed
him. A certain vagabond was down from the hills,
singing songs in the street near by the house of Ap
Ariph, songs of a former folk that dwelt once, they
say, in those valleys, and begging for rice and curds;
it was him the lightning hit.

And the gods were satisfied, and their wrath abated,
and their thunder rolled away and the great black
clouds dissolved, and the ancient one of the gods
went back to his age-old sleep, and morning came, and
the birds and the light shone on the mountain, and
the peak stood clear to see, the serene home of the
gods.